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A New Partner in the Fight to Save Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
8

The Network for Public Education works with scores of state and local grassroots groups that want to protect and strengthen public schools. Almost 90% of out nation’s children attend public schools. We are fighting libertarian billionaires and religious zealots who want to dumb down and indoctrinate our children. Above all, they want to cut their taxes by undereducating our children.

We just added a new partner!

The Network for Public Education congratulates Our Schools Our Democracy (OSOD), a new partner in our work to protect, defend, and improve public schools. Its comprehensive research exposes the harm charter schools do to Texas Public Schools and serves as a blueprint for reforming charter school laws not only in Texas but in every state.

OSOD will focus on fighting school privatization in Texas, with a special emphasis on the impact of charter schools. According to their website, “Texas public schools, governed by locally elected school board members, are the cornerstone of our democracy and the heart of our neighborhoods. However, since state lawmakers first authorized open-enrollment charter schools 30 years ago, unchecked charter expansion has harmed public school districts in every corner of the state.”

Along with the organizational launch is the launch of a comprehensive report: Facing Facts: Charter Schools in Texas. The report presents startling facts on the financial drain of charter schools on public schools, the lack of charter transparency, and the irresponsible practices presently enabled by Texas law. It provides readers with the arguments they need to actively advocate for charter reform.

Please visit their exciting new website here. 

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Resistance, Texas

Washington Post Kills Ad Calling on Trump to Fire Musk

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2025 //
7

Julie Creswell of The New York Times reported that The Washington Post killed an ad calling on Trump to fire his best buddy Elon Musk. The story was first reported in The Hill. Who could have given such an order?

Creswell writes:

An advertisement that was set to run in some editions of The Washington Post on Tuesday calling for Elon Musk to be fired from his role in government was abruptly canceled, according to one of the advocacy groups that had ordered the ad.

Common Cause said it was told by the newspaper on Friday that the ad was being pulled. The full-page ad, known as a wraparound, would have covered the front and back pages of editions delivered to the White House, the Pentagon and Congress, and was planned in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund.

A separate, full-page ad with the same themes would have been allowed to run inside the newspaper, but the two groups chose to cancel the internal ad as well. Both ads would have cost the groups $115,000.

“We asked why they wouldn’t run the wrap when we clearly met the guidelines if they were allowing the internal ad,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and chief executive of Common Cause. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason.”

News of The Washington Post canceling the ad was earlier reported by The Hill.

Although it is unclear who made the decision to pull the ad or why, the move comes amid growing concern about the changing mission of the Washington Post newsroom under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. The newspaper’s decision last fall to end its longstanding tradition of presidential endorsements and Mr. Bezos’ front-row seat at Mr. Trump’s inauguration have led some to wonder whether the news organization has been accommodating a Trump administration.

Last month, more than 400 employees sent a letter to Mr. Bezos requesting a meeting to discuss leadership decisions that they said “led readers to question the integrity of this institution.”

Mrs. Kase Solomón said that all the content for the ad — art and text — had been sent to The Post’s advertisement department last Tuesday and that “no alarm bells were rung” by anyone from the newspaper at that time. She said she did not know who inside the organization made the decision to pull the wrap.

The ad featured an image of Mr. Musk laughing over a picture of the White House with text that reads: “Who’s Running This Country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?” The ad called for readers to contact their senators and tell them it’s time for Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Musk…

Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man who controls six companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, has been given far-reaching power by the president, who has allowed Mr. Musk to dismantle federal agencies and freeze funding for various grants and programs.

Margaret Huang, president and chief executive of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the disappearance of critical programs and grants would have a direct and negative effect mostly on lower-income individuals and people of color.

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, Ethics, Failure, Media, Musk, Elon, Trump

Why Elon Musk’s Family Moved from Canada to South Africa in 1950

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2025 //
9

This post appeared originally on October 10, 2023. It explains why Elon Musk’s grandfather Joshua Haldeman left a prosperous life in Canada and moved his family to apartheid South Africa in 1950. He was a successful chiropractor and aviator. He was also involved in politics, but was not successful at winning elections.

Wikipedia describes Haldeman’s racism and anti-Semitism:

Haldeman was a supporter of South Africa’s apartheid policies and the ruling National Party of South Africa, telling a reporter for the extremist Die Transvaler newspaper, a tool of the Nazis in South Africa during World War II: “Instead of the Government’s attitude keeping me out of South Africa, it had precisely the opposite effect—it encouraged me to come and settle here”.[2] In 1951, he wrote an article about South Africa for the Saskatchewan newspaper, the Regina Leader-Post, defending apartheid and writing of Black South Africans: “The natives are very primitive and must not be taken seriously… Some are quite clever in a routine job, but the best of them cannot assume responsibility and will abuse authority. The present government of South Africa knows how to handle the native question.”[2][20]

Weeks after the Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960, Haldeman self-published The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and the Menace to South Africa, a 42-page response to the massacre. The United Nations passed Resolution 134, the body’s first official condemnation of apartheid and the beginning of decades of diplomatic isolation. Later Haldeman self-published a second book alleging again international conspiracies: The International Conspiracy in Health, which cast suspicion on fluoridation, vaccinations, and health insurance.[2][21]

Grandfather Haldeman was an energetic private pilot, who traveled the globe. He died in a plane accident in 1974, when Elon was only three years old. Maybe he had no influence on his grandchild.

Too bad Elon Musk didn’t stay there. He could have used his entrepreneurial brain to vitalize the economy of the African continent.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Elections, Musk, Elon

Texas: Public Schools Are Imposing Austerity Measures While State Holds Huge Surplus

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2025 //
14

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is holding hostage the more than five million students in public schools while he demands vouchers for kids who are already enrolled in private and religious schools. Abbott has refused to increase funding for the state’s public schools unless the legislature approves vouchers, most of which will subsidize the affluent.

Last year, the legislature refused to approve vouchers. Since then, Abbott engineered the defeat of several anti-voucher Republicans. He’s hoping to win approval in the current session. Vouchers will pass easily in the state senate. We will see what happens in the House, where rural Republicans stood against vouchers in the past, before Abbott’s purge.

Abbott is playing Reverse Robin Hood. He is stealing from the poor to pay for the rich. Billionaires like Jeff Yass, the richest man jnnOennstlvsnia, and Betsy DeVos of Michigan, are funding his intransigence with millions in campaign contributions.

The Texas Monthly reports that school superintendents are increasing class sizes, laying off teachers, eliminating electives, and doing whatever they can to keep their doors open.

The article says:

Two years ago, during the 2023 legislative session, superintendents of Texas schools were optimistic that state lawmakers would boost public-education funding. After all, soaring inflation was straining the already meager finances of districts across the state, and lawmakers had at their disposal a $32.7 billion budget surplus. Spending some of that money on the urgent educational needs of the state’s children might have seemed like an uncontroversial proposal. 

Instead, the unthinkable happened: Legislators left Austin without putting any significant new money into schools or giving teachers a raise. The consequences have been dire.

Texas’s public schools were already among the most poorly resourced in the country: Our per-student funding is about 27 percent less than the national average. The basic allotment—the minimum amount of funding per student that school districts receive from the state—has been stuck at $6,160 since 2019. That would need to be upped by about $1,400 just to keep pace with rising costs. Public education advocates worry that lawmakers will provide only face-saving increases to the basic allotment in 2025 while diverting billions to private schools.

Many school leaders have had to undertake draconian austerity measures. Nearly 80 percent of districts have reported challenges with budget deficits. Given the stakes, 2025 could be a pivotal year for Texas’s public-education system….

Texas Monthly spoke to a group of superintendents to ask about how they were coping. They all spoke about the budget cuts and unfunded mandates (like requiring the hiring of police officers without providing funding). One superintendent, Jennifer Blaine of Spring Branch, said:

JB, Spring Branch: We don’t have anywhere else to cut. We are cut to the bone. I consolidated everything I could, and I cut everything that I could. If we have to cut further, you’re talking about severely impacting academics in the classroom and, quite frankly, safety and security. Five and a half million kids are in Texas public schools, and I don’t understand how our legislators and our governor don’t see this as a crisis. If we don’t educate these kids to the highest levels and prepare them for postsecondary success, we’re going to crumble as a state. I don’t know where the disconnect is. Education is the great equalizer. But nobody is talking about that, and I think it’s a missed opportunity because this is not going to end well. 

The title of the article in the print edition was  “A Legislature That Will Spend at Least as Much Per Pupil as Louisiana.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Corruption, Cruelty, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Texas: Gov. Abbott Says He Will Accept Nothing Less than Universal Vouchers, for Rich and Poor Alike

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2025 //
12

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas insists on vouchers. He has promoted them in every legislative session. Last year, he called several special sessions of the legislature, solely to get his vouchers passed. He failed and failed and failed. Since last year, he collected millions of dollars to spend defeating anti-voucher Republicans. He spent it on a campaign of lying about them, barely mentioning vouchers but accusing the refuseniks of opposing extra funding for public schools (they opposed extra money for public schools linked with vouchers), he accused them of failing to support Trump on the border, he threw dirt and lies, and he defeated several of those anti-voucher Republicans for their perfidy.

Here’s where matters stand today, as reported by Gromer Jeffers, Jr, in the Dallas Morning-News:

AUSTIN – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott insisted Monday that he would accept nothing less than a robust, universal school choice voucher program, and he resisted calls to join the plan with blanket increases in public school funding.

As he did in Sunday’s State of the State speech, Abbott committed to raising public teacher pay, but on his terms and largely in the form of merit increases

A plan to allow families to use public dollars on private schools is the centerpiece of his legislative agenda for the legislative session that ends in June. Abbott said his success last year in using the primaries to oust House Republicans who voted against school choice dictates that any plan approved by lawmakers be universal and substantive.

Political Points

“An overwhelming majority of Texans want school choice,” Abbott said during an interview in the Governor’s Mansion with The Dallas Morning News. “I won all of those races because the voters want school choice, so now there’s no reason for us to ratchet back on what we’re going to do, especially knowing full well that what we’re seeking to achieve here right now is exactly what the voters of Texas want. Most important is what the parents across the state of Texas want.”

Abbott will make a campaign-like stop Tuesday in support of school choice at a private Christian school in Athens.

In Monday’s interview with The News, Abbott also stressed his commitment to helping President Donald Trump with his immigration policies, discussed the mechanics of lowering property taxes and said his relationship with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows was better than ever.Related:Texas Senate committee approves ‘school choice’ bill on party-line vote

The governor said he was hopeful his agenda, which includes seven emergency items, would be approved by Texas lawmakers.

School choice tops his wish list.

Abbott is backing Senate and House plans that would devote $1 billion for education savings accounts to help families pay for private school expenses and tuition. He wants voucher-type assistance available to any Texas student who wants it.

Public school advocates say they are concerned about the impact universal school choice would have on public education. In the past, a coalition of rural Republicans and urban Democrats in the Texas House have been able to block voucher-style plans, but Abbott says he has 79 votes in the 150-member chamber to approve school choice.

His stronger political position has resulted in a hardening of his education policies, which do not include a significant increase in money to public education outside of teacher pay raises.Related: ‘Hardcore’ supporters will help Texas finally pass school choice plan, Gov. Abbott says

“We bent over backwards to try to provide a compromise position last session,” Abbott said. “They weren’t going to negotiate at all. They said they don’t want anything other than ‘not school choice.’”

Abbott said public education is being funded at historic levels, adding that private schools in Texas were not on “equal footing” with public schools that use taxpayer dollars to build facilities.

“We’re talking apples and oranges here,” Abbott said. “There’s so much money and so much expansion. Spending on the education side has been on the administrative side. We’ve got to ratchet back the spending on administration and devote that money to where it belongs and where it’s most useful, and that is paying our teachers.”

Teacher pay raises would be partly across-the-board because it would come in the basic allotment. The bulk, however, should be devoted to merit increases, Abbott said.

“We want to ensure that we’re putting teachers on a pathway to be able to earn a six-figure salary,” he said. “Some will be across the board. A lot will be a merit.”

A Senate proposal would add $4.9 billion to the Foundation School Program for teacher pay and changes to the Teacher Incentive Allotment. Teacher pay would increase $4,000 for all teachers, plus an additional $6,000 for rural teachers.

State Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, disagrees with Abbott, saying public schools are not adequately funded because of inflation and unfunded mandates, including paying for increased school security.

“The unfunded mandates that both he and the Legislature put on local school districts, we need to make them whole, because it’s the right thing to do,” Anchia said. “We asked them to increase security, and we said we would pay for it.”

Anchia said $5 billion devoted to public education is sitting unspent.

“We should fully fund public schools based on the historic reform bill that we passed in 2019 and release the funds that he withheld during the last biennium for public education,” Anchia said. “He held these funds hostage to get his subsidy of private schools, also known as the voucher scheme, done.”

Abbott says schools could have had that money, but they rejected his education savings account plan.

Anchia said he hoped pay raises would become a reality.

“I’m all about driving money through the formulas down to the local districts, where they know how to make investments better than any politician in Austin,” he said.

Another major agenda item for Abbott is taxes. Texas has a $24 billion budget surplus to work with, and the governor wants property taxes reduced on top of the historic $18 billion property tax cut he signed in 2023.

Abbott said local tax increases often mitigated the 2023 property tax cut, and he said he hopes to sign legislation that would require local tax increases to be approved by two-thirds of voters.

“Reducing property taxes going forward is only going to work if we tie the hands of the taxing authorities to make sure they’re not going to be able to increase property taxes,” Abbott said.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Lies, Texas, Vouchers

Wired: The Young Men Who Are Helping Musk Evaluate Federal Programs and Personnel

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2025 //
22

Wired magazine published an article identifying the young men who are members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team. They are called “experts,” even though they range in age from 19 to 24. Some of these “experts” are college dropouts. All of them worked for either Musk or billionaire Peter Thiel before their current assignment.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Injustice, Musk, Elon, Trump

Trump’s Goal: To Take Complete Control of the Federal Government

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2025 //
24

During the campaign, Trump told Sean Hannity that he would be a dictator on Day 1. He understated his goal, as we now know. He intends to be a dictator after Day 1. He wants to take complete control of the federal government.

He wants to destroy the civil service, place his loyalists in every policy making position, politicize the Justice Department, and eliminate all dissenting voices.

Both the Justice department and the FBI are supposed to be insulated from politics. Trump hated that. He’s putting them under the control of close allies. Every career prosecutor at the Department of Justice who worked in the Trump investigations has been ousted. The FBI has been purged.

His plan to eliminate the civil service, called Schedule F, has been rolled out.

He fired a dozen Departments’ Inspectors General. These are the nonpartisan officials who scrutinize each Department and guard against waste, fraud, and abuse. Will he replace them with MAGA flunkies?

To be sure, Trump is the puppet, not the mastermind. Others are pulling the strings. Musk, Vance, Stephen Miller (the architect of his plan to deport 11 million immigrants). The billionaire Peter Thiel pulls Vance’s strings.

Trump’s failed effort to stop-payment on almost every federal program may have been Vance’s idea. Vance is closely aligned with the radical libertarian guru Curtis Yarwin, who believes that democracy is a failure and that what is needed is a dictator who will eliminate most of the government.

The offer sent to two million civil servants asking them to resign in exchange for a payout likely came from Musk, who downsized Twitter by offering a mass buyout. Some Twitter retirees are still suing to get the buyout. No money is available now and unlikely to be appropriated to pay those who accept the offer to give up their civil service jobs.

The loss of top civil servants in every agency will undermine their effectiveness. These are the people with institutional memory; they know the agency far better than their political bosses. They serve, no matter which party is in power. And they are leaving in droves, pushed out by the new bosses.

Just when you think it can’t get worse, another Executive Order rolls out. Trump boastfully signs with his Sharpie. Does he know what’s he’s signing? Does it matter? Day by day, Trump demonstrates that he has “absolute immunity.” Day by day, he brings another part of the government under his control. And the Republicans in Congress not only acquiesce, they praise him for abrogating their powers.

Trump is a puppet, and cowed, pusillanimous Republicans in Congress are his lapdogs.

Day by day, the foundation of a Trump dictatorship are put into place. When he jokes about running for a third term, is he joking?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Musk, Elon, Trump

Trump Signs Executive Order Directing Federal Funds to School Choice, Directly Attacking Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2025 //
25

Trump has always expressed contempt for public schools. In his first term, he appointed billionaire religious zealot Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education. She has spent many millions over decades to promote charters and vouchers, and she shoveled as much money as she could to charter schools, especially large chains.

His nominee for Secretary of Education, wrestling-entertainment entrepreneur Linda McMahon, will be no less spiteful towards public schools than DeVos. McMahon is chair of the extremist America First Policy Institute, which peddles the lie that public schools “indoctrinate” their students to hate America.

In his 2024 campaign, Trump pushed school choice as one of his major issues.

Yesterday he signed an executive order directing that discretionary federal funds be spent to promote all forms of choice, and he praised states with universal vouchers.

His executive order lambastes the “failure” of the public schools, a refrain we have heard from privatizers for the past 30 years, and he makes false claims about the benefits of private choices.

He says:

When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities.  For this reason, more than a dozen States have enacted universal K-12 scholarship programs, allowing families — rather than the government — to choose the best educational setting for their children.  These States have highlighted the most promising avenue for education reform:  educational choice for families and competition for residentially assigned, government-run public schools.  The growing body of rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance. 

This paragraph is larded with lies. Despite decades of loud complaining about how public schools hurt our economic competitiveness, we have the most vibrant and successful economy in the world. Our public schools, which enroll 85-90% of our nation’s students, contributed to that success.

Next is his patently false claim that universal choice is the best path to educational success. There is no evidence for that claim. In fact, Florida–a leader in universal choice–just experienced a sharp drop in its NAEP scores. Its reading and math scores dropped to their lowest level in more than 20 years.

And most ridiculous is his assertion that “rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance.”

Josh Cowen’s new book The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers thoroughly debunks those claims.

The most rigorous research, which Cowen reviews, shows that poor kids who take vouchers and switch to a private school experience a dramatic decline in their test scores. Many return to public schools.

The most rigorous research shows that most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. The voucher is a subsidy for their religious and private school tuition.

The most rigorous research shows that universal vouchers in every state that has them are used by affluent families. They are welfare for the rich.

The most rigorous research shows that public schools lose funding when new and existing state funding goes to nonpublic schools.

The most rigorous research shows that universal choice busts the budgets of states that fund all students, including private school students.

Trump has sharpened his knife to destroy public education.

Fight back!

Join the Network for Public Education and link up with people in your community, your state, and the nation who believe that public dollars should be spent on public schools.

Sign up for the annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Columbus, Ohio, April 5-6 and meet your allies.

Organize, strategize, resist!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Home Schooling, Privatization, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Texas: Governor Abbott Has No Mandate for Vouchers

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2025 //
5

Dr. Glenn Rogers, a staunch conservative from a rural district in Texas, opposed vouchers because the people who elected him didn’t want vouchers. Governor Greg Abbott promised his deep-pocketed donors that he would get vouchers. So Republican legislators like Glenn Rogers had to go.

Dr. Rogers is now a contributing columnist for The Dallas Morning News. He is a rancher and a veterinarian in Palo Pinto County. He served in the Texas House of Representatives from 2021-2025.

He explains here that Governor Abbott has no mandate for vouchers.

The 2024 Texas Republican primary was brutal and unprecedented in the volume of unwarranted character assassination, misdirection and, of course, money spent from both “dark” and “illuminated” sources.

Despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s persistent opposition to rural Republican House members and a fourth special legislative session, a bipartisan majority defeated school vouchers (called education savings accounts) by stripping off an amendment in Rep. Brad Buckley’s ominous omnibus education bill that tied critical school funding to vouchers.

The governor then proceeded to launch his scorched-earth attack on rural Republicans. Of the 21 that voted for their districts instead of Abbott’s pet project, five did not seek re-election, four were unopposed, nine lost their seats and three were victorious. Only one third remain in the House.

Reducing Republican opposition to vouchers was a resounding success for the governor and he has been crowing ever since that the 2024 slaughter proves Texans across the state desire vouchers (“school choice” in governor speak). But does it?

During the primary campaign, polling data clearly demonstrated vouchers were not a priority for Texas voters, including those in my district. The border, followed by property taxes and inflation were top of mind, with vouchers barely making the top 10.

With four special sessions, Christmas and a week with a major freezing-weather event, block-walking time before the early March primary was limited to about six good weeks. I hit the pavement hard and, true to the polling data and my consultant’s advice, the border and property taxes were on everyone’s mind. In fact, after knocking on thousands of doors throughout the district, I had only a handful of questions about vouchers and usually from current or retired educators who were anti-voucher.

Abbott frequently referred to Republican ballot Proposition 9 as proof of massive voucher support. “Texas parents and guardians should have the right to select schools, whether public or private, for their children, and the funding should follow the student,” the ballot measure read.

With only around 20% primary voter turnout and questions designed by the State Republican Executive Committee to confirm their often-radical views, the results are hardly a reputable referendum for anything. The wording and structure of the voucher proposition were flawed. Professional surveyors suggest that to receive the most genuine responses, questions should be asked one at a time. The proposition fails to follow this fundamental rule by asking two questions at once and only allowing for a single “Yes” or “No” response.

Of course, everyone wants choice and thankfully we already have a choice of public, charter, private and home school opportunities

The proposition also failed to ask whether voters supported taking tax dollars away from public education to fund a voucher program. That question certainly would have told a different story.

The goal was vouchers, but the tactic was misinformation about completely different issues that captured voters’ attention. The governor repeatedly stated that my fellow rural Republicans and I were weak on the border or that we couldn’t be trusted on border issues. He referred to my F rating from Tim Dunn-financed scorecards.

Ironically, the governor was fully supported by me on every one of his legislative priorities, especially the border, but with one major exception: school vouchers.

I served on the House Republican Caucus Policy Committee the last two sessions and voted 97.5% with caucus recommendations. I voted 96% of the time with the Republican majority. Yet Abbott stated in his rallies in my district that I consistently voted with Democrats. These are disingenuous tactics straight out of the Texas Scorecard playbook.

The governor may have an out-of-state mandate for vouchers, funded by Pennsylvanian TikTok billionaire and voucher profiteer Jeff Yass, who poured over $10 million into Abbott’s crusade to purge Republican House members.

But here in Texas, the mandate simply does not exist.

If Texans truly supported diverting public-school funds to private interests, there would have been no need for fearmongering and smear campaigns to achieve it. The fact that the governor resorted to such underhanded methods is not a show of strength or conviction. It is a tacit admission that Texans are not buying what he is trying to sell.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Privatization, Rural Schools, Texas, Vouchers

Bill Gates Says It is “Insane” to Allow Elon Musk to Destabilize Politics in Other Countries

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2025 //
30

I have frequently criticized Bill Gates for his half-baked efforts to “reform” American public schools, all of which have done terrible damage to the schools.

Now Elon Musk is sticking his nose into elections in other countries, and Bill Gates is calling him out.

This article appeared in Business Insider:

Bill Gates doesn’t like how Elon Musk has involved himself in the politics of foreign countries such as the UK and Germany.

“It’s really insane that he can destabilize the political situations in countries,” Gates said in an interview with the UK newspaper The Times published Saturday.

Musk has become increasingly vocal about his views on UK and German politics in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, Musk called for the removal of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The TeslaCEO accused Starmer of not doing enough to prevent the rape of girls when he was Britain’s chief prosecutor from 2008 to 2013.

And on Saturday, Musk spoke virtually at a campaign rally for the Alternative for Germany, Germany’s far-right party. Germany is set to hold national elections in February.

In December, Musk said in an op-ed for Welt am Sonntag, a prominent German newspaper, that the AfD was “the last spark of hope for this country.” He also praised the party for its “controlled immigration policy.”

“I think in the US foreigners aren’t allowed to give money. Other countries maybe should adopt safeguards to make sure superrich foreigners aren’t distorting their elections,” Gates told The Times.

Musk’s political influence has increased significantly following President Donald Trump‘s victory in November. Musk spent at least $277 million backing Trump and other GOP candidates in last year’s elections.

That bet has since paid off for Musk, who called himself Trump’s “first buddy.” The billionaire has joined Trump on calls with world leaderssuch as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

Gates previously criticized Musk for his obsession with going to Mars. Gates said he would rather spend money on vaccines than on rockets. Go, Bill!

If only WE had laws limiting the contributions of billionaires to political campaigns!

Categories Billionaires, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Musk, Elon
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